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The Devil's Cup: A History of the World According to Coffee |  | Author: Stewart Lee Allen
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
Buy Used: $1.98
as of 7/31/2010 15:12 MDT details
You Save: $12.97 (87%)
New (17) Used (39) from $1.98
Seller: bay-city-books
Rating:  19 reviews
Sales Rank: 187613
Media: Paperback
Pages: 240
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.4 x 0.6
ISBN: 0345441494
Dewey Decimal Number: 641.3373
EAN: 9780345441492
ASIN: 0345441494
Publication Date: March 4, 2003
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
In this captivating book, Stewart Lee Allen treks three-quarters of the way around the world on a caffeinated quest to answer these profound questions: Did the advent of coffee give birth to an enlightened western civilization? Is coffee, indeed, the substance that drives history? From the cliffhanging villages of Southern Yemen, where coffee beans were first cultivated eight hundred years ago, to a cavernous coffeehouse in Calcutta, the drinking spot for two of India’s three Nobel Prize winners . . . from Parisian salons and cafés where the French Revolution was born, to the roadside diners and chain restaurants of the good ol’ U.S.A., where something resembling brown water passes for coffee, Allen wittily proves that the world was wired long before the Internet. And those who deny the power of coffee (namely tea-drinkers) do so at their own peril.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 19
 One of my favorite books August 23, 2006
Bryan Bowden (Chicago, IL USA)
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
I came across this book by accident and bought it out of my sheer love for coffee. But the book not only has the great tale of how coffee came from Africa and made it's way all over the earth to the daily drink we know today, it also is a first rate travelogue. The author follows coffee's migration from Africa to Europe. Mr. Allen has quite a knack for finding and reporting his adventures and misadventures with a fun easy to read style.
If you like non-fiction travelogues, then do yourself a favor and buy this book.
Enchanting, humorous, and addicting May 7, 2006
Joe Duffy (Seattle, WA USA)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I'm a huge fan of the food-history-travelogue style of writing, and this book satisfied my craving quite nicely. I found myself accelerating my reading to see what would happen next, as the author travels the world in search of various historical brews. From Africa to the Middle East to Europe and beyond, you feel like you're right there, experiencing the bustle of busy marketplaces and the chatter of a Viennese cafe. It's written in an amusing prose and presents an array of intruiging tidbits of historical evidence.
As I sipped my coffee along-side the book, I couldn't help but experiment and day-dream of whether the brew tasted even remotely similar just a few hundred years ago, although I found myself (unfortunately?) short on ambergris. It's not often that I read a book in just about one sitting, but I was hooked as soon as I started reading.
You'll savor this book on java, its interesting history and Allen's travel February 7, 2006
Will Goodman (Nashua, NH USA)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
As a well-traveled and verified coffee fanatic, I thoroughly enjoyed reading The Devil's Cup by Stewart Lee Allen. There are many books more encyclopedic on the history of coffee but it is rare to find one like this that masterfully weaves centuries of historical fact with a modern tale. If you are not crazy about coffee like I am, Allen's tale of travel through foreign lands is enough reason to read this book. Sure, we have all heard the story of Kaldi the goatherd and how people may have first started to drink coffee. Ever wonder why we call it Java, why we refer to a cup of coffee as a "Cup of Joe" and what do the Capuchin monks have to do with Cappuccino? The Devil's Cup will fill your mug with anecdotes, proverbs and explanations related to the world's favorite beverage while Allen weaves in a report on his adventures around the world.
As Good as the Perfect Espresso..! January 28, 2002
Al Kotob Woghat Nathar (Cairo Egypt)
6 out of 8 found this review helpful
It's brief, rich, flavory, cheery, and mind alerting.Stewart Lee Allen takes you along a wonderful trip around the world. In light and easy prose, you get all the information you want on the history of coffee and coffeecentric theories gathered from real serious research. But he takes away the seriousness and the graveness and actually makes you smile all the way.
This book is as sweet as coffee itself April 5, 2001
Kosovar (New York)
10 out of 14 found this review helpful
Believe it or not while I was reading this book I was completely transfered into another world,into another time.Thanks to the writers talent I was enjoying being there and learn the story of coffee and so many others things.I have tried my best to read this book as slowly as I could but that was impossible as I have finished it just in one day.God,it was such a pleasant read and that was amazing because I found it hard to believe that there is a non-fiction book to be finished just in a few hours. Reading this book is magic - Having this book in your bookshelf is having an expensive souvenir and you must know that if this book weights 200 grams is worth 200 billion dollars! Because it is a story of something that is part of the life and that's of course COFFEE that we use three or more times a day. Isn't it a shame to drink Coffee and not knowing its history???
Showing reviews 1-5 of 19
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